Good Morning Australia!! - The weak response to an "ecological catastrophe" - The hunt for a NSW man's killers cools - Reagan's racism is revealed - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the army to help tackle massive wildfires raging in Siberia, a series of conflagrations so bad that Greenpeace is calling it an "ecological catastrophe".  More than three million hectares have been affected.  Putin is facing growing anger in the vast eastern territory because the government has been caught flatfooted and there seemed to have been no planning to do anything to protect the people.  Ten planes and 10 helicopters with firefighting equipment are being deployed in the region - which seems somewhat lacking in that the fires are spread out of thousands and thousands of kilometers northeast of Krasnoyarsk in an area about as big as Australia.

Canadian Police are scaling back - but not ending - the search for the two suspected killers of NSW man Lucas Fowler and Chynna Deese of Charlotte, North Carolina, and University of British Columbia professor Leonard Dyck in a separate episode.  Limited assets will be left in Gillam, Manitoba, where Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky were last seen.  But the military aircraft and much of the manpower will be scaled back.  At this point, investigators can't confirm the two are even still in the area or if they're still alive.  "This is a very large area we are looking at, very remote," said Royal Canadian Mounted Police Assistant Commissioner Jane MacLatchy.  "It's a very tough place to find somebody who doesn't want to be found."

The US wants an international coalition to provide security for shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, but Germany is already saying it will not take part in any such adventure.  This is after Iran seized a British tanker in retaliation for the Brits commandeering an Iranian vessel weeks early near Gibraltar.  Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer says Berlin and its partners have, from the start, "had a different view from the American side, and that will certainly have to be taken into account in the decision."  Germany, Britain, and France want to stick with the JCPOA - AKA the Iran Nuclear Deal - and a military mission targeting Iran wouldn't be the best way to do that.

German authorities charged the former boss of Audi Rupert Stadler as part of an investigation into the VW emissions-cheating scandal.  Heis accused of fraud, false certification, and criminal advertising practices.  Prosecutors allege he knew that hundreds of thousands of Audi, Porsche, and VW cars contained software designed to cheat pollution tests, yet turned a blind eye.

A new case of Ebola has emerged in Goma, a city in the Democratic Republic of Congo with more than two million residents.  This was confirmed a day before today's anniversary of the declaration of the latest Ebola outbreak.  There is no indication that the earlier case is relate to this one, a miner from the north who came to the city on 13 July and began showing symptoms on 22 July.  He has been put in an isolation ward, and the people he came in contact with have been administered one of the experimental Ebola vaccines cleared for used in the outbreak.  The 2018-19 Kivu Ebola Outbreak has killed 1,813 people out of around 3,000 confirmed and suspected infections.

A US news magazine has released recordings of then-California Governor Ronald Reagan - a future president - having a disgusting, racist conversation with President Richard Nixon.  According to The Atlantic, the two were discussing the United Nations decision to recognize Communist China and expel Taiwan; several African nations backed Beijing.  "To see those monkeys from those African countries - damn them, they're still uncomfortable wearing shoes!" Reagan said as Nixon laughed.  Nixon resigned in disgrace in 1974 over the Watergate Scandal, and Reagan became president in 1981 after a campaign excoriating a non-existent "welfare mother in a Cadillac".  Although the political cult that sprang up around Reagan has for decades falsely maintained he was not a racist, the newly revealed tapes confirm the allegations of critics.